Abstract
Silicone rubbers (SIRs) are common industrial materials which are often used for electrical insulation including weather sheds on non-ceramic insulators (NCIs). While SIRs are typically resilient to outside environments, aging can damage SIRs’ favorable properties such as hydrophobicity and electrical resistance. Detecting SIR aging and damage, however, can be difficult, especially in service. In this study we used hyperspectral imaging (HSI) and previously investigated aging methods as a proof of concept to show how HSI may be used to detect various types of aging damage in different SIR materials. The spectral signature changes in four different SIRs subjected to four different in-service aging environments all occurred between 400––650 nm. Therefore, remote sensing of NCIs using HSI could concentrate on bands below 700 nm to successfully detect in service SIR damage.
Highlights
Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based silicone rubber (SIR) materials are used in a variety of applications, including as industrial sealants, electrical insulation for aircraft, and on high voltage (HV)transmission lines in the form of non-ceramic insulators (NCI) [1]
Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) software distinguished between aged and virgin Room temperature vulcanized (RTV) samples, as the two high temperature vulcanized (HTV) samples exhibited significant spectral differences (Figure 4a,b). This was not entirely unexpected, as the aged sample was notably lighter in color compared to the virgin sample (Figure 4a), which was visible to the naked eye
Our study indicates that hyperspectral imaging could be used to detect RTV damage, even if it is not readily visible to the human eye (Figure 11a,b) or in RGB images
Summary
Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based silicone rubber (SIR) materials are used in a variety of applications, including as industrial sealants, electrical insulation for aircraft, and on high voltage (HV). Excess water on NCI surfaces can cause leakage currents, which can form an electrical path to ground resulting in a local black out or worse [7,8,9,10,11,12] Oxidative stressors, such as UV and acidic rain, can damage SIRs, decreasing their hydrophobicity [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. This manuscript is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the details of hyperspectral imaging technology; Section 3 details the materials and methods utilized in this study; Section 4 presents the results and discussion of the findings; and Section 5 presents the conclusions
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